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We are celebrating 10 years in business! It was the weekend of the PACE retail show in Kansas City, MO. I had just finished my product fit research. I was exploring two start-up possibilities and intended to vet another product with a colleague the following week. Both opportunities could bring jobs into our region, and both had the potential to be game changers for small and mid-size companies – my passion. A blizzard and a prayer would determine my fate… but fortitude would define our destiny. Each product option would have used two different partners for the build. One lived locally and one I would visit at a conference across the country the following week. I was to meet Joel, Deep Water’s CTO, the weekend before I left. A massive snowstorm was planned and even though his extended family told him not to make the trip into rural America… he did. Along with his small children and wife. We met with a great plan and an agreement to discuss more later and when he pulled out of the driveway late into the evening, no storm had arrived… but the wind had begun to blow. I went to bed that night and I remember telling God that these were both great ideas, and I would pursue them both until He decided which one to choose. I woke up the next morning to attend my conference and the roads were covered in snow. Every flight was canceled – except for mine. So, I traveled 30 mph in the dark, barely able to see the road in front of me for 2 hours. All the while I kept praying, “I’m going… until you stop me.” And I arrived at the airport on time. I walked into our small regional airport, a little surprised my flight had not been cancelled. Every single other flight had already been cancelled. I got a coffee and proceeded to prepare for my conference while waiting on my flight. It would not have surprised me to hear my flight was delayed for weather, but the intercom speaker went off instead, “Now boarding”. So, I got on the flight and prayed, “I’m pursuing both… until you stop me.” And I waited for the plane to take off. Waiting much longer than normal, I expected the attendant speaking over the intercom to say anything but the next set of words, “Ladies and gentlemen, we have a mechanical issue. We will need you to step off the plane, BUT we should be able to take off as soon as it is fixed.” And so, I exited the plane and again I prayed, “I am going… until you stop me.” One would think that when they did finally cancel my flight, I would have turned around, but I called the premium number for re-booking flights because my conference is 3 days long. And as I waited, I prayed, “I’m going… until you stop me.” This time, for the first and only time I have EVER had this happen on the premium flight booking line, the operator paused as she tried to book. I heard her typing over and over. I heard her say, “That’s so weird.” I smiled to myself, and I prayed, “I’m going… until you stop me.” So, when I heard the operator say, “You’re not going to believe this, but I can’t get you out for another 3 days.” I murmured to myself, “I’m actually not surprised.” I walked out the door, traveled slowly back home and prayed, “I guess you stopped me”. And that is how Deep Water began. I left a highly promising career with 20 years of experience to start over in a brand-new industry. Founding a company is no light task. In all my research, successful stories always start with an investor who believed or a ‘big name customer’ who paved the way. When we stepped into this world, we were not servicing big customers. We knew no one. We chose to self-fund. The humbling amount of fortitude it takes for my team to do what has been done and survive 10 years is mind-blowing. However, as I look back, I realize that our fortitude isn’t springing from any wells that ever run dry. Through investment crashes… God provided a way. Through COVID… God provided a way. Through giants… God provided a way. Through health battles and hardships… God provided a way. Through fear and uncertainty… God provided a way. And 10 years later, He continues to do that for us. Every single day we battle to bring our vision to life and serve our customers and employees. But if you’ve ever wondered if we had the fortitude to finish what we start… well… let me put it to you like this… we’re going until He stops us.

As we are nearing 10 years in business, it is time to reflect on HOW we do business rather than what our business does. I come from a VERY small agriculturally based community. My roots are seeped deeply in old-fashioned hard work and family-inherited German diligence. And while no one living in my hometown would consider me a ‘farmer’ by any stretch of the word, I like to say I take my ‘farm roots’ into ‘technology fields’. Farm life is my preferred culture, even if my skills are largely technology-based.  Lately, as I look back on what it has taken to get here… and how long we have left to go… I am reminded of something my FFA instructor used to say on repeat, “There is no substitute for time and hard work.” When we started Deep Water, we were coming a few years off the heels of an acquisition of our last company. I was a shareholder and instrumental resource, but not a founder like my parents and uncle and good friends. It was my second company acquisition to be a part of, for both my family and my community. And the second time I have watched jobs leave our rural area as fast as they took to arrive there. Technology jobs are few and far between in southwestern Missouri. However, Missouri has some of the brightest technology minds and schools around. When we merge with other firms our resources reach the top incredibly fast… but it is there we stop. Rural families and communities are tight knit… finding a rural resource willing to live the typical ‘manager’ lifestyle provided by corporations with 2-3 weeks of travel every month is akin to asking them to chop off their right leg. (There are thousands of Hallmark movies about this story.) We are all accustomed to making our kids’ ballgames and birthday parties and special community events… while making a living wage. And we are happy to trade the ‘wealth of nations’ for a good book in a rocking chair with our small children. It is… a clash of culture... not skill. When you think about it, studying corporation history in rural areas is a great pre-cursor to understanding the ‘work-life’ balance our newer workers are practically demanding. I believe COVID gave us all the ability to see what it would be like to be ‘together’ with our families… and many people discovered the life they didn’t know they had traded. The life that rural America fights so hard to keep. So, when it came time for me to get our first institutional investment, I began following the well-blazed path before me. I secured our funds. However, with four young kids, the knowledge that I would be employing many young workers where I live, and the privilege of having founders all in the heart of their child-rearing years, I paused before accepting our investment to do what every good pragmatic product person does. I listened. I spent hours talking with founders from Springfield, Kansas City, St. Louis and Little Rock, AR. I set-up meetings with founders all over the country. I spoke with dozens of investors. I just wanted to see if my path would look the same as the last two companies I experienced. Every… single… one... ended the same way. At this point, we made the bold and risky decision to do something different… turn the money down. Now, here we are in uncharted waters. A small but HIGHLY determined (stubborn) SaaS start-up who survived COVID and whatever we’re calling this extreme financial bubble, with no large VC pouring money into our marketing and sales budgets. Slowly, but surely, we are building our customer base one referral at a time - one happy customer at a time - just so that we can keep honoring our commitment to ‘under-promise’ and ‘over-deliver’. So that at the end of the day, I can be sure my home, my culture, and my family are honored in this process. Rather than focus on profit and growth to arrive 'on time' for the next portfolio sale, I am free to make decisions that are best for my employees, my customers and our long term growth. I will hustle and grind to get there at least 5-10 years slower, but “There is no substitute for time and hard work.” In the end, the only thing sweeter than a large glass of iced tea on a hot summer day… is earning it in the hay fields. Today, I am eternally grateful for 10 years of ‘doing things differently’. Fast-paced Start-ups are hard. Building a Business is hard. Choose your hard.

Did you know using a handheld scanner to bring your items into the store could cost you thousands of man hours a year? It’s been the accepted practice for decades. All the good retailers do it. But since we’re nearing our 10-year anniversary… we think it’s time to shed light on some flaws in the process that we’ve been fixing to help our stores. It’s 4 PM on a Friday and your accountant is trying to reconcile invoices received against items delivered to your stores. The vendor is requiring payment, but the accountant is looking for the missing $168 in delivered product. The problem is that none of the multiple shipments available match the total she needs. So… the manhunt begins. Hundreds of accounting manhours are spent hunting down invoices. The final culprit in this case? New pricing wasn’t added to the pricebook in time for delivery, so the invoice never matched the total, so nothing was ever submitted by the store manager. Welcome to the Bermuda Triangle of Receiving. Is accounting always complaining about mis-matched or missing invoices? Using a handheld scanner to create the invoice in receiving ASSUMES pricebook is flawlessly managed and some of that is entirely out of your control. I call this the ‘ideal scenario’ trap. We assume that the ideal scenario is the most COMMON scenario. Unfortunately, REAL life is a little messy most times, and we can get lured into the Bermuda Triangle because we don’t realize it has happened until days or sometimes weeks later. For example… Your pricebook manager depends on PERFECT communication from your suppliers. But… the Supplier may not have sent the right costs to your pricebook manager. Or… maybe the pricebook list wasn’t updated with a last-minute negotiated deal from marketing? With dozens of suppliers to manage and thousands of products, this can happen at LEAST once a month and throw off receiving EVERY time. The more locations… the bigger this problem. Receiving depends on PERFECTLY executed promotions. Not all of us have access to pre-negotiated deals and firm, consistent lower prices. Our records indicate that the average single store or mid-size chain can experience over $30,000 in supplier price modifications every year across dozens of our thousands of items. Expecting perfection here is probably not realistic and leaves at least a few scanned invoices that won’t match and remain sitting in the Bermuda Triangle. The correction may occur, but everyone is busily focused on sales, and no one notices the invoice hasn’t updated until accounting starts screaming. Missing New and Promotional Items. Maybe it’s a shipper. Maybe it’s a special holiday promotional item. Somewhere, someplace… someone forgot to tell the pricebook manager to add it. And now, the policy is to reject it completely. Or… hold that invoice until the pricebook manager catches up… Even if you allow those cost overrides in the back office, hunting and pecking through paperwork is unlikely to be prioritized in a store manager’s day and it may be a LONG time before they actually get to it. For the past decade, Deep Water has been helping stores escape the Bermuda Triangle of Receiving. Our stores enjoy many great hybrid approaches using a digital invoice repository. It’s like a document imaging solution on steroids. Every invoice from every store is stored in our repository - electronic or paper. The data is scrubbed and cleaned and prepped for searching. We add missing UPCs, case quantities and many other amended items to make it PERFECT for receiving itemized inventory into multiple systems JUST like EDI. Think of it like a staging location for all the data coming into your systems. Your business can make whatever adjustment it needs to a supplier’s product catalog without involving IT or the supplier or touching multiple back offices. Some of our stores simply edit the paper and receive the data directly into inventory and some compare at the home office against a scanned set of items. Either way, your whole team will appreciate the simplicity of centralized information and clean data. No more last minute rescues out of the Triangle.